Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “Anals of Relocation 001”

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April 6, 2010

Anals of Relocation 001

Hatched by Dafydd

Note the new category of this post; we'll be using it frequently as we keep you in the loop (thus making us all loopy).

For the first time since the inception of the Big Lizards blogsite in 1931, we are resiting the physical facilities, buildings, and sordid premises of the corporate presence; by which I mean we're moving from the condo we live in at this moment to a real house, about 1.5 miles away. Still in the same city -- heck, still in the same zip code -- but definitely a condescension to upward mobility.

Our deadline for being out of here and into there is April 15th. I have a recurrent nagging feeling that this is also some other important deadline, but it escapes me at the moment. No matter; I'll remember what it was sometime in May.

We still have a list of things 2 do a mile high; but it used to be eight miles high, so we're making progress. Aside from running back and forth between Lamps Plus, Home Despot, and the new Lizard Central, I spent most of the day removing the stump of a hedge whose branches we had already excised.

Did you all know that it's very difficult and time consuming to remove a stump by digging and hacking at it? We pondered dynamite; but since the hedge stump is approximately 5 inches from our bedroom wall, we tabled the suggestion indefinitely.

Three hours of chopping with pick and spade, undermining the roots, savagely attacking the living thing with a powerful set of clippers, and periodically drenching the ground with water to sling mud at the grass roots not only rid us of the noisome and unwanted presence, it also qualified us for high-level employment at Organizing for America.

Nota bene: Seeing the mene mene tekel upharsin on the wall, Sachi cleverly managed to be selected for several back to back to back business trips; so whenever I use the first-person plural, be advised it's more the "royal we" than indicator of actual collaboration.

We were stuck at the house for some time, as first a glazier, then a pair of locksmiths paraded through our property, plying their trades. The glazier had to replace three panes. It was originally two panes when we bought the place; but last week, while attempting to budge a stuck front window (several successive paint jobs whose performance artists thickly coated all the window runners, aspiring to make the cover of House Paintiful), we -- that is, I -- put our elbow through the window glass.

I actually don't mind glass cuts too much: They're clean and sharp, they don't leave a ragged edge or an ugly scar, and I usually don't even feel them. But I did feel this one, as it meant one more pane in the wallet.

We paid to paint the outside, but we're planning to paint all the interiors ourselves. We have some other grandiose (Sachi's worried term) schemes:

Plant vegetable garden in backyard.

Plant flowers and such, and create a Japanese garden in one out of the way spot back there.

Kill the front lawn with Round Up, till it under, and landscape ourselves a Southwestern motif... spineless cacti -- I call them "prickly pro-life Democrats" -- sagebrush, wild desert flowers, and such. Maybe a dry riverbed runs through it, depending on how much patience we possess.

Put up a picket fence along the western boundary of the property and another, more decorative fence from the garage to the house, thus fencing in the backyard completely and allowing us to get a canine companion. (The garage-house fence posts must be driven into concrete, so maybe we'll be renting a hammer drill. Or even hiring some illegal aliens to drill through the concrete for us.) We've never done anything like this before, but it's a good time to learn.

We want to drywall the garage, walls and ceiling; and we can really only afford to buy the materials -- not pay for the labor. Unless we use more illegales. So we'll be doing most of it ourselves. Needless to say, we're as unexperienced at putting up drywall as we are at putting up fences. Necessity is the great teacher.

Sure, it seems like a lot; but our other motto has always been "the world is not enough." (Our other other motto is "nothing succeeds like excess;" and of course, as we have mentioned more than a hundred times on this blog, our original motto is "no pussyfooting.")

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 6, 2010, at the time of 8:15 PM